


Night in the City

by halfeatenmoon



Category: Night In The Woods (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, Mental Health Issues, gender questioning, small town queers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-23
Updated: 2017-12-23
Packaged: 2019-02-18 21:20:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,461
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13108749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfeatenmoon/pseuds/halfeatenmoon
Summary: Angus and Gregg moved away to Bright Harbor at the end of winter, when the wind was the coldest. Mae comes to visit in the summer. She's stronger now than she ever was before, but she's still afraid that Bright Harbor might not seem real, and her world might go back to being nothing but shapes.





	Night in the City

**Author's Note:**

  * For [loveoftheimpossible](https://archiveofourown.org/users/loveoftheimpossible/gifts).



The walk out of her house to the train station was good, familiar, in summer colors now instead of fall. The station itself was good, too, with the Possum Springs mural in dusty orange and green, the trusty soda machine she now knew was free and everything, and the sound of Garbo and Malloy's scratchy voices on the stupid station TV. These scenes had lots of memories in them, enough that all of them blurred together into the sense that this was home.

The train was harder. Mae hadn't taken the train all that many times in her life. The scratchy fabric of the seat carried a mix of vivid memories with it - a few trips into Bright Harbor with her parents, when she was much younger, to see the big city. The trip out to college, full of promise; the trip back, full of failure. The countryside rushing past was strange to her Mae hadn't been to Bright Harbour in ten years. She didn't remember what the land on the way there had looked like, and even if she did, so much of it would have changed now. Small towns like Possum Springs got smaller, some of them so much smaller that the train drove right past their stations without stopping. As they got closer to their destination, there were housing estates where there used to be farms and woods, too; miles of identical houses stretching as far as the eye could see, and not a tree in sight.

The closer she got to Bright Harbor, the more fear crept up on her. Living in Possum Springs for six months had its downsides, but it had kept Mae's feet on the ground. Most of the time, now, her world still seemed real. But traveling this far away, she didn't trust herself to stay tethered to reality. The fear rose in her chest, that maybe her reality was slipping away as she got deeper and deeper into this urban sprawl, where more of the countryside was replaced by these houses, one after another, all the same. Like they were just shapes. Like maybe all of Bright Harbor would just be shapes.

She put her hand in her pocket as the train pulled into the station, feeling the edges of the poem that Selmers had handed her at their group the night before. Mae didn't pull it out and read it; she'd memorized the words already. She just closed her paw around the piece of paper for a moment, feeling the sharp edges and the ridges in the surface where Selmers' pen had worn a groove. Then she took a deep breath and stepped out into the city she remembered as a town.

The station was bright, as the name suggested. Bright lights, bright colors on the walls, a 'Welcome to Bright Harbor!' mural that was so bright it seemed like a parody of the one she'd left behind in Possum Springs. And people, people everywhere, getting off the train as others got on, so many of them that they seemed like a single chaotic mass, a force of nature. The railway station barely seemed real, except that in the middle of it all was Angus - a solid figure in red-brown fur, like a rock in the rushing stream of people that Mae could cling to. 

Not that she was literally going to cling to him, of course. That would be weird. But she waved both her arms in the air when she saw him, and he waved back, and when she reached him it felt like the whole world got quieter.

"Hey," he said.

"Hey."

"You have a good trip?"

"It was okay. Things have changed."

"Gregg says sorry he can't make it. He's just started a new job and he didn't want to change shifts just to meet you."

Mae blinked. "He totally wanted to blow off work just to come meet me, didn't he?"

"Yeah, he tried, and then his boss said no, and I said don't get fired in the first week, and I promised him that I'd show you around all my favorite bits of Bright Harbor and then you guys can have adventures all night."

Mae kind of wanted to just go to their apartment, see if it was anything like their old one, whether it still looked like a Gregg-and-Angus home even when it was somewhere else. But she told Selmers she was going to be brave, and there was the offer of an Angus tour. This could be okay.

It was already the evening, but the summer days were long and the city was still in clear, rosy daylight as they walked out of the station. Mae balked for a moment at the size of the place, the buildings taller and more imposing than she remembered, but Angus soon guided her down a laneway that was cramped but quieter, smaller. She liked it here, full of little cafes and street stalls selling food.

"I thought you might be hungry," Angus said, when her stomach growled audibly.

"I forgot to eat on the train." Mae looked around hungrily at the stalls around them. "What's your favorite?"

"I really like the taco stand up here. That is, if you're not sick of them after working at Taco Buck?"

"No way!" Mae bounced on her hind paws. "I never get sick of tacos! Anyway, this isn't a Taco Buck, it's different tacos. I can compare and contrast. It's basically research."

They picked up a few tacos each and kept walking down the street, munching as they went and then laughing as they licked at the sauce that ran out and onto their paws. By the time Mae had gotten herself clean, she realized Angus had brought them to a bus stop. She felt a momentary swoop of anxiety - she didn't have a bus pass, there were no buses in Possum Springs, she didn't even have any change - but when the bus arrived, Angus produced a spare ticket and found them seats up the back.

"It's not a long ride, but I thought you'd like it," he said, as they sprawled out over the long back seat.

Mae did like it. She used to imagine riding in the back of a school bus with Gregg, if Possum Springs had had a school bus.

The neighborhood where they hopped off was more like Possum Springs on a busy day. It felt comfortingly like a smaller town in its own right, which stores and apartment buildings mixed together on the main street, and houses reaching out behind them. Mae squeezed her paw in her pocket again, reminding herself to check in, make sure things were normal and she was feeling okay. But in this part of town, and with Angus by her side, she felt fine. The warm breeze and the low summer light made her feel even more alive. The restaurants and bars had tables that spilled out onto the wide sidewalks, so people were drinking and laughing out in the warm dusk air. On a corner, a mouse was playing the guitar and singing. It was homey, but kind of magical.

Mae did a double take at a shop they walked past. She did it again when they passed the next store - yeah, there it was, a rainbow sticker right there in the window. She hadn't seen a pride flag since college.

"Angus?"

"Yeah?"

"Are we in the Gay Zone or something? Is this the Gaytown part of Bright Harbor?"

"Yep, this is it. Queer Central. ZIP code 6969."

"Are there like, gay clubs right outside your apartment? So you can just walk down every night and walk home again when you're done?"

"Not quite. We don't actually live here - still can't afford rent in most of the apartments in this block. But we're not far away. And it's not like everyone here is queer, but most of the shops are like, queer friendly. And there's a few places that are extra cool. Like over there -" He pointed to a place across the street. "It's not a gay club, exactly, but they have gay nights."

"Are they good?"

"Yeah, I don't go much. It's kind of expensive, and I don't like being around drunk people that much. Plus there are so many people there just to hook up, and I don't really need that. But it's nice meeting folks. I never even met anyone queer except Gregg, and you."

"I did, in college."

"Yeah, that makes sense."

Mae didn't tell him how distant and alienated she felt from the other people in the LGBTQA social group at her college, how she felt like she didn't look right or like the right things or really relate to anyone there. Angus didn't ask, just steered her on.

"This is where I wanted to take you, though. I think you might like it."

"A bookstore?" Mae frowned. "Angus, it's like, seven thirty at night."

"I know." He pushed the door open. "They keep pretty late hours."

"Night hours? Oh." Mae stepped in, and then stopped when she saw the counter. "There's a bar?"

"Yeah, but check this out." Angus steered her towards the shelves, and pulled out a couple of books. "Look at this stuff!"

"It's... a queer bookstore?"

"Right! They have some other stuff too, but look at this. Queer romances, queer history, queer... anything you can think of, really. There's a little queer fantasy section too. Probably anything you want."

They both browsed for a while, occasionally picking something out to wave at each other. Mae had never thought she was that into books - she liked the books her parents got her when she was a kid, but as she got older, fiction seemed more and more alien to her, and characters seemed like strangers, not anyone she could relate to. She thought it had been that she spent too much time on the internet, or lost her attention span, or later, that she was just going crazy. Some of these books, though, she thought she could get into. The one about the princess who went to rescue another princess, or the ones about high school teens in love, or even some of the historical stuff. She liked the sound of that, of knowing what life had been like for queer people in different times. It would be nice to imagine the queer people who'd lived in Possum Springs before, maybe even when it was founded, knowing that she and Angus and Gregg probably weren't the first.

As she kept browsing, Mae came to some shelves with stuff other that books, some T-shirts and wristbands and bumper stickers. She's thinking of buying a bi flag sticker for her laptop when she sees a box that makes her heart stop for a minute and her fur stand on end. 

The one thing she missed about the LGBTQA group at college was that everyone asked what pronouns you preferred. Mae had always just said 'she' but it made her stop, the first time someone asked, realizing that she could pick something else if she wanted to. She didn't know what the options were, just that she didn't want to be 'he', but it made her conscious that 'she' sat wrong on her, too. One person in the group had gone by 'they', and while that didn't feel right for Mae either, she admired them for it. She wanted to be like that too, kind of. She just didn't really know how.

On the shelf in front of her was a box of badges that said "My pronoun is..." with a bunch of others after it. There were ones for he and her and they, but there was also 'ze' and 'zie' and 'em' and 'ne' and 'ver' and... there were just so many. She dug through the box, feeling a bolt of excitement each time she turned over a new word. A whole lot of possibilities, and it would be as simple as pinning on a badge.

"Do you want to buy anything?"

She jumped when she realized Angus had come up beside her, and thought for a crazy moment about shoving the box away. Angus wasn't shocked, though, just there with her, waiting.

"I want to buy so much more than I can afford, here," she said, trying to sound casual even though she knew her fur was standing on end.

Angus hesitated, his gaze drifting to the box of badges. "I could buy something for you, if you want?"

She couldn't take Angus' money, not when he and Gregg must still just be scraping by. That was an excuse, though; a true one, but still an excuse. If she walked out of here with a pronoun badge, it might be too real. The badge she picked might feel wrong. Even scarier, it might feel right.

"Nah, I can't decide," she said, after a long silence.

"Okay. We can always mail you something, if you change your mind," he said. "But hey, if you want to read a bit of a book for free, we can sit down and buy drinks instead."

Angus got himself an iced coffee. Mae didn't. She felt guilty about drinking alcohol, but she in a strange city and freaking out about gender stuff and the cocktail menu looked so cool that it got her excited to drink something that wasn't beer. She watched Angus warily as she took her first sip, but he didn't frown or ask why she was drinking. He just pushed a couple of books across the table to her. The one on top was titled The Tomboy Survival Guide, by some coyote, and it made her feel touched and embarrassed at the same time.

"I thought you might like these, if you want some reading."

Mae looked at the cover and the blurb as she sipped her drink, and even flipped through a few pages, but a biography about being genderqueer and how to deal with it was too much right now. After a few minutes, she put it down and pushed them back across the table, her mouth already feeling too dry. She took a sip of her drink, and then a deep breath.

"I thought I'd find someone to date when I was in college. A girl, I mean. Like I know I dated at home, but I wanted to see girls, and I thought, at college that'll happen. For sure."

Angus looked up from his book. "You didn't?"

"I tried. It just felt all wrong. I felt all wrong, like I was just not cool enough and I didn't like the bands they were into and all the conversations we ran out of things to say. And then I was like, I'm a total bi failure, I don't even know how to connect with girls at all."

"You connected ok with Bea."

Mae snorted. "Yeah, right. She must have told you what she thought of me after that party in the State Park."

"You didn't connect at first," Angus said, "But you kept trying."

Mae thought about the day at the mall, the way she'd managed to make Bea laugh until she couldn't talk any more. It was the first time in ages she'd felt like she could make anyone except Gregg happy, and it had been the best kind of power trip. She would have loved to keep that night going. She'd break rules until she got arrested if that would keep making Bea laugh.

"You and Bea still hang out, right?" Angus asked.

"Yeah, more now that you and Gregg are here. She's busy, and she's tired a lot of the time, but I still see her most nights. Bring her around some tacos. Rub her tired feet."

That was kind of the problem, though. It felt too good, too familiar, too much like a crush. Bea was the closest person in Mae's life right now - so yes, Angus was right, she could totally make friends with girls - except that she didn't want to be friends. Bea was straight, and Mae knew it, and knew she was just setting herself up for heartbreak, but she also couldn't stop the way she'd started to dream about them looking after the Ol Pickaxe together, about kissing Bea right on her toothy face. She knew she had to stop something, or it was only going to hurt more later on. But she had one friend left in town, and she wasn't going to lose her.

"You still there, Mae?" Angus asked.

She blinked. "Oh. Yeah, still here. Just thinking."

Angus nodded. "So... you got the talking to girls thing now, but not the dating."

"Nobody left for me in Possum Springs, as far as I can tell. Practically no girls my age, let alone anyone who's not straight." There was another dark fear in Mae, and she felt it rising up now, too big to keep from blurting it out. "And soon there's going to be no Possum Springs."

Angus stared at his coffee for a long time before he softly said, "Good."

"Good?"

"Yeah. There was nothing left there that you can't get somewhere else without the stagnant life and the homophobia and everything."

"But what about Bea and her store?"

"Bea is so smart and hard working that she could run an even better store. She'd do great somewhere that actually has customers."

"What about the Taco Fox? What about _me_?"

"Aww, there are Taco Foxes everywhere, Mae. There's one just down the street." He smiled. "You could move here, too. I know Gregg misses you."

Mae tried to think through a good thing to say. Something cool and balanced that made sense. But through her rising panic, the best she could manage was to sound calm when she reached for the bitter part of her when she said "Aren't you worried I'll corrupt Gregg if I live here, and lead him into sin again?"

"I'm sorry."

"Are you?"

"Yes. I was too hard on you that night."

"Yes, you were." Mae swallowed. "You weren't wrong about me, exactly. I did throw away a good chance at college. But I can't believe you thought I was corrupting Gregg. He was the one who was always asking me to come and do crimes with him! He blew off work at the Snack Falcon all on his own."

"I know." Angus was looking down, the sheen of his glasses hiding his eyes. "I know. I'm sorry."

Mae had wanted this, but now that she had it, it didn't seem like enough. "So... what the hell, Angus?"

"I was scared." He fiddled with his cup. "I never told you how much I admired you, going away to college. That's what I wanted for me and Gregg. You inspired me."

Mae felt a weird twist in her heart. "Aww, Angus."

"But when you came back, it made me think... maybe it can't work. Maybe we'd done all this work for nothing and everyone always falls back here." He hunched over.

Mae could hear the other thought behind that: I was scared that we'd end up like you. She wants to yell at him, but she can't do it. She can't get angry at Angus for something he didn't say.

"It did work," she said, quietly. "It did. You got out, and you're here, and you have this awesome life and all these other queer people and bookshops and bars and music." Mae sighed, wistfully. "It's pretty great."

"Still working minimum wage."

"Better here than in Possum Springs, right?"

"Right," Angus smiled. "So why worry about Possum Springs sinking to the ground? You can come here, like I said. Live gay and live free."

It sounded good, it really did. Except that when Mae looked around she was aware that her fur was standing up on the back of her neck, that she was in a strange place, that the light coming in the front window wasn't the light of home. It was getting dark, now, and nothing looked familiar any more. She rubbed at her arm and tried to remind herself that this was real. It was going to stay real.

Angus looked worried, now. "I didn't mean to scare you."

Mae shook her head. "I can't... I don't think I can survive, here."

"What's so scary about this place? It's nice, you'd fit in here. And you wanted to move here once, before."

"I asked if I could move here with you. I can't do it on my own."

"Sure you can. You brought down a murder cult!"

"And doomed the town."

"You can't really believe that."

Mae sunk down in her chair and glared at him. At least she didn't feel like shivering any more. Being annoyed at Angus made her feel more grounded, which made her more annoyed, in annoying positive feedback loop.

"I know you don't believe in anything except what we can prove, but the way Possum Springs was declining before is nothing like what's happened after we stopped the dad cult. So many shops have closed. Bea works so hard on the Ol Pickaxe, but she's going to have to close soon too, and then she'll have nobody, nothing. They're talking about shutting down the school. You don't have to believe in God to know that's worse than things were doing before."

"Even if there was a god," Angus said, with a sigh, "Even if that bullshit was true, you can't think it was a mistake to stop them. They were killing people. They tried to kill you. And you kept going when people didn't believe you, I didn't even believe you sometimes, and you stopped a band of murders and saved lives and... you became a hero, Mae, and you can't think that was a mistake." He swallowed. "We did the right thing, even if it meant the town is dying, and I can see how that's sad and scary even when I think it's right. But you did the right thing, and you can have a life outside Possum Springs, an even better one."

Mae licked her lips. "I went crazy, when I was in college."

"Sometimes things don't work out."

"No, I mean, I actually went crazy. I couldn't tell what was real any more, and then nothing seemed real. There was nothing I knew, nothing to hold onto. People didn't seem real either. When I talked to people I felt like a puppet. I couldn't see why anything mattered." She scratched at her hand. "It was only when I came home that I felt kind of normal again, and even then I'm not okay all the time."

Angus blinked at her, slow and thoughtful. "I'm sorry. That sounds really hard. I guess there's nobody to talk to around Possum Springs either, huh."

"There's Doctor Hank, but he's useless. Me and Selmers started a group up at the church. Selmers had the AA group already, but she wanted something different, just for bad brains stuff. A couple of other people come, older guys, mostly. Nobody's an expert, but it helps."

She felt again for the poem in her pocket. She knew it by heart, but it was reassuring knowing it was there.

"Anyway," she said, after a moment, "The group's good, and I've gotten better, but being in a whole new place, it could happen again. It'll probably happen again. I'll lose it, and it won't be real, and this time, there's no Possum Springs to go back to, and I'll just be..."

Angus reached out and gently covered her paw. "You wanna go outside, get some air? And we can keep walking?"

Mae couldn't speak. She just nodded, in a kind of haze, as Angus thanked the bartender and put books back on the shelving cart and steered her out into the night air. It had gotten cooler and she could breathe a bit easier, the fog of panic clearing out of her mind.

"Okay," she said.

"Okay?"

"Okay."

"It already bothers you, huh?" Angus said, sadly.

"Yeah."

"But we'll be here. You should move here, and at least you'll have me and Gregg," Angus said, firmly. "Even if nothing else is real, you know there's us. And there are doctors here that are way better than Doctor Hank, there's one who's already helped Gregg, and I bet there are other groups around town like your one at the church, and there are people who understand."

Mae nodded. The air was darker, but it seemed clearer now, and she could hear music drifting down the street again. Maybe one day she could be okay here.

"Thanks, Angus," she said, "Can we just walk for a while?"

"Sure thing," he said. "It's a bit of a way, but do you want to walk to our apartment? Gregg should be home by the time we get there."

The route led them down quieter streets, past houses with trees outside, and the occasional group of people sitting out on a porch and watching them pass.

"I can't see the stars out here at night," Angus said, at last. "Not really. I do miss that."

"You can come back to Possum Springs to go stargazing, you know. Train goes both ways. And there must be other woods near here. When..." she paused, and thought about it. "Yeah. When I move here, we can road trip out sometimes. We'll go camping and you can tell me what stars are really like and I'll make up constellations and you can tell stories and..."

Angus stopped and hugged her. It seemed such a strange thing, standing there on the sidewalk in Bright Harbor, and Angus hugging her like he never had before. It was odd for a split second, and then Mae sank her face into his soft, furry chest. Angus' arms were heavy on her back, keeping her secure, and she'd be jealous of Gregg getting these hugs all the time if she weren't enjoying this so much right this second. When Angus moved away she sighed, a little, and she smiled up at him as she stepped away. He was busy adjusting his glasses, but there was a small smile on his face too.

Angus cleared his throat and said "I'd like that. I'm excited that you're thinking of... I mean, that you're going to move here."

The thought still filled her with fear, all these unfamiliar streets and hundreds of people. But Angus would be here, soft and solid at the same time, and Gregg would always remember who Mae was. He could remind her with robot adventures and knife fights and tripping back in the woods.

"Yeah," Mae said, at last. "I'm excited, too."

**Author's Note:**

> The Tomboy Survival Guide is a real book by a nonbinary author who really is called Ivan Coyote. It's autobiography and advice and survival guide all at once and has been pretty useful to me as an eternally questioning genderweird.


End file.
